1. Field Of The Invention
This invention relates to an image recording apparatus in which pressure is applied to a photosensitive material to fix a latent image in the photosensitive material so as to develop it as a visible image. The photosensitive material is made up of a support and an active material on the support.
2. Background Of the Invention
One example of an image recording material using microcapsules containing photosensitive compounds has been disclosed, for instance, in Japanese Patent Application (OPI) No. 179836/1982 (the term "OPI" as used herein means an "unexamined published application"). The image recording material is made up of a support and a layer of synthetic macromolecular resin wall capsules containing a vinyl compound a photo-polymerization starter and a coloring agent precursor which is formed on the support. To record an image employing the image recording material, an image is optically exposed on the image recording material so that the microcapsules are hardened according to the light distribution of the image. Then the image recording material is subjected to pressure so that the microcapsules not yet hardened are broken to release the coloring agent precursor and to thereby obtain a colored image. The method is advantageous in that images of high picture quality can be obtained by a simple dry process. However, it is still disadvantageous in that the image recording material has a much lower photosensitivity than a recording material using silver halogenide.
A novel image recording material which is free from the above-described difficulty and which shows high photosensitivity and which can provide images of high quality by simple dry process has been disclosed in Japanese Patent Application (OPI) No. 275742/1986, filed by the present inventor. The image recording material is a photosensitive pressure-sensitive thermal developing material It is formed by coating a support at least with photosensitive silver halogenide, reducing agent, polymerizing compound and color image forming material. At least the polymerizing compound and color image forming material are together contained in microcapsules.
An image recording method utilizing the above-described photosensitive pressure-sensitive thermal developing material has been disclosed in Japanese Patent Application (OPI) No. 278849/1986, filed by the present inventor. In this method, first a latent image is formed on the image recording material by optical exposure. Then, the image recording material is heated so that, in the region where the latent image has been formed, the polymerizing compound is polymerized to produce macromolecular compound to thereby harden the microcapsules. Thereafter, the thus treated image recording material is piled on an image receiving material having an image receiving layer onto which the color image forming material can be transferred. Under this condition, pressure is applied to the image recording material and the image receiving material so that, in the region where no latent image has been formed the microcapsules are substantially broken, which causes the color image forming material to transfer onto the image receiving material to thereby obtain the image on the image receiving material.
An image recording apparatus which automatically performs the steps of forming by optical exposure a latent image on the above-described photosensitive material, of thermally developing it, of piling the photosensitive material on the image receiving material, and of pressing together the photosensitive material and the image receiving material to obtain the image has been disclosed in Japanese Patent Application No. 51896/1986 filed by the present inventor.
On the other hand, Japanese Patent Application Nos. 42747/1986 and 208786/1986, filed by the present inventor have disclosed a photosensitive material which is sensitive to visible light and infrared radiation. The microcapsules themselves, which are contained in the photosensitive material, are sensitive both to visible light and to infrared radiation. Therefore, with this photosensitive material, optical exposure either with visible light alone or with both visible light and infrared radiation in combination can record full-color images.
One example of an apparatus for optically exposing the photosensitive material with visible light is an analog copying device in which the photosensitive material is optically exposed with light reflected from an original which is illuminated by white light. One example of an apparatus which uses infrared radiation for exposure of the photosensitive material is a digital laser printer in which image data are converted into electrical signals to control a light beam outputted by an infrared light source to thereby expose the photosensitive material. Therefore, one of the two apparatuses should be chosen for use according to the object of the image recording operation. Thus, there has been a strong demand for an image recording apparatus which can perform both the analog exposure and the digital exposure.